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#Micro-Preemie Mom Didn’t Know If She’d ‘Be Writing an Obituary or Birth Announcement’ When Baby Arrived at 25 Weeks (Exclusive)#
Katelyn’s pregnancy had been smooth until complications led her to give birth at 25 weeks
What followed was a 118-day stay in the NICU for her baby girl, Nora
Katelyn tells PEOPLE how a social media community and the kindheartedness of others helped her through those difficult days
“I had started spotting on May 3. I called the emergency line at my doctor. It was very minimal, but I was nervous. So I called and they said, ‘Go ahead and go to sleep, but come in tomorrow morning for our first available appointment.’ When I went, they did an extra ultrasound, checked everything and I checked out completely normal,” she explains.
Katelyn tells PEOPLE that her medical team instructed her to go “straight to labor and delivery” if she experienced active bleedings or pains in a pattern.
“May 5 was a normal day and then I started to have some cramping in the late afternoon, but no pattern to it. I figured I’d been really stressed and maybe it was Braxton Hicks. I kept paying attention and went out to a Cinco de Mayo party with my family to try and get my mind off of it,” she recalls.
“The pain started getting worse, but still no pattern or active bleeding. I drove myself home and when I got home and went to change clothes, I was actively bleeding.”
Katelyn called her husband and explained the situation, asking him to meet her at the hospital. She got there first and checked herself in, also letting her family know what was going on.
“When I get to the hospital they do a pretty routine check into triage. I was 25 weeks; I think they sort of expected run-of-the-mill stuff. The doctor comes in and describes a test they can give to see if you’ll go into labor in the next two weeks. Before that, he says, ‘For good measure, I’m going to check your cervix.’”
When he did, he apologized to Katelyn and informed her she was already eight centimeters dilated. At that point, “things dramatically shifted.”
“I’ve never seen a team form so quickly. I was quickly admitted. They gave me a round of magnesium to protect the baby’s brain and steroids to help her lungs, as well as drugs to try to stop my labor,” she recalls.
It was a whirlwind for the first-time mom, who wasn’t entirely sure what would happen next. She tried to ask if she would get to go home, at which point she was gently informed that regardless of what happened next, she’d be in the hospital for the remainder of her pregnancy.
It wasn’t much longer before it became clear that not only was the baby coming soon, but that there was no stopping her labor.
“I had maybe been in there like 15 minutes and all of a sudden, like things are going faster. And I remember looking at a nurse and just saying, like, ‘I just want to know, am I gonna have my baby?’ Most everyone was telling me they couldn’t tell me, only the doctors could. And it was like an older nurse and she just looked at me and she’s like, ‘Are your contractions getting worse?’ ”
Katelyn knew they were. “And it was just like this big moment of, ‘This isn’t stopping.’ All of a sudden my doctor showed up and he said, ‘I’m so sorry to tell you but her foot is through your cervix. We’re at a very high risk of infection. We need to have a birthday now.’”
Katelyn’s husband ran in as they were preparing to take her to the operating room. Nervous, the frazzled couple quickly welcomed daughter Nora.
“You do your cesarean and that baby is not placed on your chest. You don’t touch that baby. That baby is off being intubated, right? So you have to wait a certain amount of time for the baby to stabilize and for you to stabilize and then you get to meet each other. And it’s a pretty shocking experience to see a baby that’s the size of your hand,” she shares.
“You realize what you’re in for and it’s a pretty heavy feeling,” Katelyn continues. “But I was really hopeful. Everyone at the hospital was so nice and I just wanted to be nice back. It sounds lame, but you have nothing else to offer each other because neither of you can control the outcome.”
Nora experienced a pulmonary hemorrhage 36 hours after she was born. It was another terrifying experience for the family, who had since learned an “incompetent cervix” was the cause of Nora’s premature birth.
“It’s kind of something where you either survive it or you don’t. The odds are terrible. So you think because you’re 36 hours in and she’s still here that things are okay and then this big thing happens.”
It was at that time that Katelyn started to turn to social media. While she and her husband had the support of their immediate families, they made the difficult decision not to share news of Nora’s birth with anyone else.
“Most babies are born and you get to tell your friends. You’re so excited, it’s such a happy thing. But I didn’t know if I’d be writing an obituary or a birth announcement. We just didn’t know,” Katelyn says.
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